


Red Arrow

by Serie11



Series: Femslash February 2018 [9]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Angst, Blood and Gore, Dark, Dubious Morality, F/F, this aint a happy universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 18:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13642218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: Vala swallows, because she’d never expected to live to see the sunrise after she’d found the first man with an arrow in his throat. The Red Arrow left no survivors to her crimes, no matter how big or how small the operation she was dealing with was. Vala had come here to meet her fate, because she’d always been stubborn and foolhardy, and she was intent on following those traits to the last, to come here and defiantly stand in front of Red Arrow and say:Here I am. You missed me.





	Red Arrow

**Author's Note:**

> Take note of the warnings on this one friends

 

The Red Arrow is a mystery and a shadow. Whoever they are, they never leave anyone alive in the mansions and castles and safe houses that they invade. All the people are killed with the primitive bow and arrow, although sometimes Vala wonders how primitive the weapon can be, if it’s being used like this, against guns and tasers and security cameras and everything the modern world has to throw at it.

The arrows are left behind, and their shafts and fletching are red. Well, they aren’t really, but the press got a hold of one evidence bag where the arrow was so covered in blood that the original colour couldn’t be made out. The name stuck. Vala thinks it’s rather morbid, but what isn’t morbid about the fact that this person is going around killing people. As a bodyguard, Vala is quite concerned about the Red Arrow. They never hit a place twice, because they don’t need to. Every guard in their wake is left dead, arrows used to kill and kill.

Vala’s first meeting with the Red Arrow goes something like this –

 

 

 

 

Vala taps her foot against the ground. It’s nearly the end of her shift, and she’s impatient for her replacement to appear. It’s nearly four am, and she wants to go back to her apartment so she can sleep.

Vala has one of the lowest risk areas to guard tonight, so even if there is action, it’s unlikely to start here, especially with the number of guards patrolling the walls. This place is basically a fortress, and Vala doubts that anyone will be coming through the tunnels she’s patrolling.

Pacing around the room again, she checks her watch. 4:06. Her replacement is officially late, so she buzzes it in and waits for orders. If she’s going to have to do overtime, then she wants every minute to count.

Her radio is silent. Vala fiddles with it for a few seconds and then buzzes out for a general response. That should have gotten her at least half a dozen replies.

Nothing comes through.

Vala starts swearing under her breath. She’s been taking care of the east wing of the castle, technically an entry point because someone could drop down from the mountain above onto the roof here.

She grabs her gun but doesn’t light her torch. In the middle of the night, that would just be a beacon that would alert everyone to her location, and tonight Vala feels like she’s going to need all the stealth she can get.

She comes across the first body almost immediately, a man who she recognises as being the one to patrol the area next to hers. Vala’s unease triples as she sees how he’s been killed. Her heart sinks into her gut as she makes her way down the hallway even faster now, sticking to the shadows and being as quiet as she possibly can.

There are three more bodies in the east guardroom. Vala has no idea how she didn’t hear the battle, but when she looks around the answer is obvious – all the dead people have their guns in their holsters. No bullets have been fired tonight. Their blood is red and wet, so Vala knows that she can’t be too far behind the culprit.

Creeping through the castle, Vala comes upon more bodies, one after the other. She’s sickened, because she knows – knew – these people. She can’t quite come to terms with the fact that they’re all dead now, even though she’s staring at their bodies. The quick efficiency of the kills makes her gut churn. She doesn’t know how she feels about it, so she tries to ignore the sight and the smell and the taste of death that hangs in the rooms and the corridors.

She already knows what she’s going to find when she enters the main chamber that they’d been protecting for the last few days. Their client lays dead, face down on the table, throat slit. Another five guards lie in various positions, sprawled on the floor, all dead.

Sitting next to their client, a woman is eating the remnants of his dinner.

Vala stares. The sheer absurdity of the situation baffles her, so that she can’t aim her gun, or say anything, or even really think. There’s a bow on the table in front of the woman, but it doesn’t look like what Vala had been imagining. It’s slick, sheer and _modern_ in a way that Vala knows has been intimately engineered. It’s a weapon built for killing, and it has reaped its harvest well.

“Oh,” the woman says. “I must have missed one.”

“I didn’t think you were a woman,” Vala blurts. It’s the stupidest, dumbest thing she’s ever said. As last words go, they’re pretty lame ones. Internally, she hits herself on the forehead.

The woman pauses as she’s about to grab her bow. “Why can’t I be a woman?” she asks. Vala blinks slowly, because – is that _petulance?_

“I don’t know,” Vala says. “I just didn’t think that a woman could have such brutality in her, to do what you do to people.”

Her nickname is more apt than the world knows – her hair is a blistering, blazing red that Vala wants to say is dyed, but she has the growing suspicion that it isn’t. The way that Red Arrow moves her head makes the light reflect off her hair, and no dye can contain the highlights that Vala is seeing.

“You’re a bodyguard,” Red Arrow points out. “You’ve probably seen some violent stuff committed by women. Are you new at this?”

“No,” Vala says, still admiring her hair. “I’ve been working in this profession for almost ten years now, and my mother and brother before me. I know what people can do.” She jerks her hand up to point her thumb over her shoulder. “But what’s out there? It’s something that no human should be able to do. I didn’t expect to see a woman here – I expected a monster.”

Red Arrow’s eyes turn sly. “A monster, huh? Shouldn’t you say the same thing about the person you were protecting?”

“People who want bodyguards aren’t usually good people,” Vala admits. “But problems can’t be solved by breaking in and killing all the guards that he’s hired to protect him. They’re just doing their jobs. They didn’t deserve to _die_ for it.”

“Their jobs were to protect this man,” Red Arrow says, eyes cold and unforgiving. “If you knew half the things that he’d done, you would have killed him yourself. You should be thanking me. I’ve done your job for you.”

The twist of logic leaves Vala gaping for half a second. “You’ve done my job for me,” she echoes. “Me, who had the job to keep this man alive.”

“Yes,” Red Arrow says calmly, eating another bite of food.

“Even if men are evil, they are never beyond saving,” Vala says, voice hard. “I have seen things that have made me question humanity, but I’ve seen things that have blown my mind because of how kind and selfless they are. I believe that all people have the capacity for goodness, and all people have the capacity to do bad things. Even if this man had done evil things, he still deserved the chance for redemption. Everyone can repent.”

“Even if he’s been the cause of other deaths?” Red Arrow asks. “Even if he’s crippled children, and poisoned the earth and done nothing in his whole life but take and take and _take_?”

Vala shudders and takes a deep breath. “Nothing is served by killing,” she eventually says. “At that point, nothing can be done. No redemption can be earned, because it just _stops._ ”

“Sometimes things need to just _stop_ ,” Red Arrow says, but her voice is subdued. “I can understand what you’re saying, but I disagree. Some men need to be stopped far more than they need to be saved.”

Vala looks at her then – her hair is loose and has come forward to hide her face, as Red Arrow has bowed her head forward slightly. She’s dressed in practical black, light tactical armour. Her hand is resting on the table, near her bow but not touching it.

“The bodyguards out there didn’t need to stop,” Vala points out. “I know that they were not evil, and that they didn’t deserve to die. Surely you can admit that.”

“I…” She pauses. “Perhaps,” she says, almost sounding shocked. Vala wonders when she was last reprimanded. All accounts say that Red Arrow works alone – she does not work for money or anything else beyond her own sense of who she should _stop_.

“You need a stronger word than perhaps,” Vala says. “Because I’m certain that I’m right.”

Red Arrow looks at her, calculating. “What’s your name?”

Vala swallows, because she’d never expected to live to see the sunrise after she’d found the first man with an arrow in his throat. The Red Arrow left no survivors to her crimes, no matter how big or how small the operation she was dealing with was. Vala had come here to meet her fate, because she’d always been stubborn and foolhardy, and she was intent on following those traits to the last, to come here and defiantly stand in front of Red Arrow and say: _Here I am. You missed me._

Faced with Red Arrow’s soft green eyes and her glinting red hair, Vala can only shake her head sadly and introduce herself.

“My name is Vala.”

Red Arrow hums softly. “Vala. That’s a good name. I like it.”

“Thanks,” Vala says wryly, because she doesn’t know how she’s mean to feel, when there’s a woman with her hand on her bow and an arrow in her other hand. Red Arrow draws her bow so fast that Vala has time to understand why no one ever got any shots off, but that’s about it.

The arrow never gets fired.

“You didn’t flinch,” Red Arrow muses. “I don’t know if that makes you brave or stupid.”

“My mother always had trouble distinguishing them as well,” Vala remembers.

Red Arrow’s eyes go hungry then, and Vala wonders if she ever knew her mother. Probably not – Vala didn’t think that someone ended up as an internationally wanted assassin by having a calm and normal childhood.

“I think you’re probably right about killing people’s bodyguards,” Red Arrow says. “Which would make me slightly hypocritical if I killed you now, Vala. So I’m going to offer you a choice, instead. And then, you can be the one choosing the outcome of this situation.”

Vala feels her stomach churn, but she doesn’t let it show. She lowers her eyebrows and stares at Red Arrow, because she has a feeling that blinking now would be a fatal move.

“I can’t let you go around telling people what I look like or who I am,” Red Arrow says. “So these are your choices, _Vala_. Either I kill you now. Or you come with me.” She leans forward, eyes alight and _alive_ in a way that Vala could never have thought possible. Red Arrow had dulled so many eyes, a part of Vala protested at the fact that her eyes could look like that. “Come with me, and _live._ Help me take down these disgusting men, and show me how to live by your words. To kill only those who need to stop.” Red Arrow’s lips curve in what Vala might, in other circumstances, called a smile.

“You’re crazy,” Vala manages to say, because – really?

“I’ve been called worse,” Red Arrow murmurs. “But take this choice seriously, because it might be the last one you ever make.”

Vala is trapped in her eyes. There’s something there that Vala has felt like she’s been chasing her entire life. Red Arrow lives in the moment, with thoughts only for the moment. She’s a creature who knows how to tend to her own needs and wants, and right now, what she wants is Vala. Vala would have to be blind to not see that in her eyes.

“I’ll come with you,” Vala says, the words tasting like sand and ash. “I’ve never considered a career as an international assassin, but hey. Things change, and all that.”

Red Arrow’s lips curve, dangerously sharp. Vala can’t take her eyes away from them. “Good choice,” she purrs, and then she suddenly is standing by Vala’s side. Vala’s mind whirs with thoughts and implications, but right now she’s more intent on _living_ through these next few minutes.

She wonders if that’s what Red Arrow feels, the whole time.

“Let’s go then,” Red Arrow says, teeth glinting white. “Oh, and if we’re going to be together from now on? Call me Aloy.”

Her skin flushed and tingling, her senses alert, Vala can only follow her onto their new path together.

**Author's Note:**

> In game, it always made me uncomfortable as to how easily Aloy went from killing machines to killing people. This fic was an attempt to explore that part of her personality, through Vala’s eyes.


End file.
